WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Dozens of U.S. and British warplanes struck three air defense sites in southern Iraq with bombs and missiles on Friday in a raid targeting Baghdad's increasingly sophisticated anti-aircraft network, the Pentagon said. (Read map caption below)The jets struck an air defense control center that uses fiber-optic communications cables to integrate Iraq's air defenses, an anti-aircraft missile site and a long-range radar station, all located southeast of Baghdad in a southern ''no-fly'' zone.
In Baghdad, Iraq said an attack on civilian targets by U.S. and British warplanes had killed one Iraqi and injured 11.
The attack, similar to a major raid against the same defenses in February, followed stepped-up efforts by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's military this year to shoot down U.S. and British warplanes that have been policing no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War.
'SELF-DEFENSE' STRIKE
No western warplanes have been shot down. But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said recently that Iraq was improving its air defenses ``both quantitatively and qualitatively'' with fiber-optic communications cabling.
``The main aim of the strike was to protect our aircraft and our pilots -- and obviously the way you do that is to degrade his (Saddam's) ability to target and hit us. Our focus and our reason for the strike was a self-defense measure,'' said Army Col. Rick Thomas, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida.
Defense officials said the fiber-optic air defense control center is located near an-Numaniyah, southeast of Baghdad. The radar and anti-aircraft missile bases are farther southeast of Iraq's capital, near an-Nasiriyah.
It was the second time this week allied planes struck Iraqi targets in the no-fly zones, although the earlier and smaller raid in the northern zone on Sunday was simply to hit back directly at anti-aircraft weapons that had fired on the planes.
The United States on Wednesday quickly rejected a warning from Saddam in a major speech to stop sending U.S. planes over the no-fly zones. U.S. officials said pilots would continue attacking Iraqi air defenses in response to attempts to shoot down their planes.
INCREASING ATTEMPTS BY IRAQ
At the same time, President Bush said while on vacation in Texas that Saddam continued to be ``a menace'' to his neighbors.
Pentagon officials said last month the Iraqi military came close to hitting a high-altitude U.S. U-2 spy plane with a missile on July 24.
The United States also accused Iraq of apparently firing anti-aircraft missiles into both Kuwaiti and Saudi airspace on two recent occasions.
Rumsfeld said last month Iraq had made major improvements in its air defenses since the February raid. Both Friday's raid and the February strike were much bigger in scope than dozens of tit-for-tat retaliatory air strikes against smaller Iraqi air defense targets over the past decade.
The United States said in February that Chinese technicians were helping Iraq lay fiber-optic cables to integrate its air defenses.
U.S. and British warplanes have patrolled no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq since the Gulf War, when Iraqi troops were ousted from Kuwait by a U.S.-led coalition.
MAP CAPTION:
Dozens of U.S. and British warplanes using guided missiles and bombs attacked air defense sites in southern Iraq at an-Numaniyah and an-Nasiriyah, southeast of Baghdad, the Defense Department reported August 10, 2001. (Reuters Graphic)